James Cawley is a 50 year old Elvis impersonator from Ticonderoga, NY; his friend William Ware Theiss was costume-designer for the original Star Trek series, and left Cawley the blueprints for the original Star Trek Enterprise sets in his will — so Cawley rented out a 13,000 sqft shuttered supermarket and built an exquisite replica […]

For the past week, Naked Capitalism has run a series of articles by transportation industry expert Hubert Horan on the economic shenanigans of Uber, which cooks the numbers it shows investors, drivers and the press to make it seem like something other than a black box that uses arrogance and lawlessness to make a bet […]

If you’re one of the 60% of Pebble employees who didn’t get a job offer from Fitbit, the company’s new owner, you’re probably not having a great Christmas season — but that trepedation is shared by 100% of Pebble customers, who’ve just learned (via the fine print on an update on the Pebble Kickstarter page) […]

The Boing Boing Store’s Gift Guide is full of ideas for pretty much anyone in your life like hipster ice cub trays, Xbox controllers, Halo Boards, and even diamond necklaces. As always, all products in the Boing Boing Store come at great discounts, too. Shop by price bucket starting at under $20. Under $20:Bloxx Jumbo Ice Trays […]

Unlike traditional lighters, the SaberLight features an electronic plasma beam that’s both rechargeable and butane-free. This sleek lighter is even approved by TSA, so you’ll never be stuck buying lighters you’ll just have to throw away partially used. For some people, like me, this is a pretty big game-changer. The SaberLight’s beam is actually both hotter and cleaner […]

Holiday shopping is in full swing, and the Striiv Touch is one of the best gift ideas I’ve landed on. Its simple design works for females and males, and its wide range of features makes it suitable for even the non-fitness enthusiasts in your life.Unlike traditional fitness trackers, the Striiv Touch also acts as a smartwatch. It […]

It’s not necessarily bad to allow for-profit ventures, it’s just bad when they take over and re-write rules to suit their own ‘personal’ needs.

Let’s say I want to fill a need for blueberry flavoured bagel schmear. I have 20 containers, charge $0.25 per container and all 20 sell. I increase my production and increase prices to $0.50. That was tasty, great, and I made a profit.

If I notice that I’m selling less due to Pauls’ strawberry spread. Rather than improve my product, I fake a strawberry allergy and have the spread banned at the office. Because I manipulated the system, my sales pick up and I raise my prices to $0.50. Consequently, I’m a giant bag of poo-poo.

So…
For-profit, good (iff you aren’t also a prat).
Being a prat, less good.

I worked in Yahoo’s Search Marketing department for a few years, which is essentially the same thing as Google AdWords. Every advertiser who submitted ads selling products that could potentially be illegal according to U.S. laws â€” including porn, pharmaceuticals, weapons, etc. â€” was individually reviewed by an editor trained to look for any indication that something was amiss. It was official company policy that ALL sites selling prescription medications needed to be certified by the U.S. government. NO EXCEPTIONS. If you don’t have the official Seal of Approval, you’re nixed immediately.

The WSJ story states, however: “Google said in February 2010 it would begin allowing ads only from U.S. pharmacies accredited by the National Association of Boards of Pharmacy and from online pharmacies in Canada that are accredited by the Canadian International Pharmacy Association.”

“In February 2010″…?!? I worked at Yahoo in the early- to mid-2000s, and we knew the legal stakes back then, so clearly Google knew that allowing uncertified pharmacies was potentially illegal â€” and decided to go ahead anyway because there was so much money to be made. (Much like both Google and Yahoo have colluded with the Chinese government because they wanted access to the huge Chinese market, no matter what the cost.) One has to assume that Google believed that paying a huge penalty would be worth it due to all the $$$$$ they could make by skirting laws that are put in place to protect both American consumers and the American pharmaceutical industry.

Weak, Google. So very weak … and so very typical.

But on a more lighthearted related topic, as a Yahoo “red flag” editor, I DID get to see a lot of porn at work. Frankly, most of it is tedious and unsexy. Regardless of that, however, when people asked me what I did for a living, I could say, “Oh, I just look at a lot of online porn and drug websites all day. No big deal. Pass me a slice of pepperoni?”

Give me a break, I mean the charge should go on the “Pharmaceutical companies” and them alone. Pharm Companies running “their” ads how “they” decided to make them doesn’t seem like it would be a GOOGLE issue to me. That’s my 2 cent’s anyway. This was a nice blog to stumble upon, found you guys at the bottom of a Forbes post – Cheers Xeni, well written!